the perfect movie credentials.

I just Tweeted that Miss Congeniality is the perfect movie. I realize that I could catch some serious slack from that, but I have my reasons. Miss Congeniality has all the things that make a movie great: a makeover, shit that blows up, and a happy ending.

Now that I think about, makeovers, explosions, and happy endings are only part of the cocktail that makes a perfect movie. For a perfect movie, you need the following items, shaken, not stirred:

1 - A makeover.

It's superficial, I know, but so is Hollywood. The first that come to mind are The Princess Diaries and Pretty Woman, both stellar movies directed by Gary Marshall. The fact that Gary Marshall is awesome (if I ever become an actress, I want to star in a Gary Marshall film) makes it okay that these movies lack explosives.

Oh, yeah, there are amendments to these rules. I don't know what these amendments are until I make them up but, hey, one of the key features of the perfect movie is to keep the audience on their toes. The Perfect Movie Credentials (PMCs) should do the same.

2 - Explosives and/or Guns.

Yeah, that's right. Girls like movies where shit blows up. My favorite stuff blowing up movie? Independence Day. Which features many of the PMCs that will be mentioned, but no makeovers.

3 - A Happy Ending.

Duh.

4 - Keeps the Audience on Their Toes/Wanting More.

The rule to this is that, if you give the audience more in terms of a sequel, then it better not suck. That's right, I'm looking at you Harold & Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. I love Kal Penn and even I had trouble making my way through that movie. But the first movie kept audiences' attention and, if you're my friend Vinnie, on the movie theater floor laughing, despite makeovers and explosions.

5 - Music
This PMC gets subcategories because I'm the one making this list.
5a - Music in the form of a killer soundtrack.
-- This award would go to Juno, for a great soundtrack that's just too damn quirky not to like.
5b- Music in the form of spontaneous singing.
-- Grease. Obviously. And Grease has a makeover and a happy ending, though I can't forget how angry the ending of that movie made my grandma who thought it was wrong that Sandy changed herself for Danny. Clearly, my grandma was a smart lady.
5c - Music in the form of intentional singing.
-- Coal Miner's Daughter and Walk the Line fulfill this need. They also fulfill the need of being about artists that are listed in my "favorite music" on Facebook. Honorable mention in this PMC goes to The Wedding Singer and the song "Somebody Kill Me Please".

6 - Quotability.

Every movie needs at least one line. And maybe this is just me being a movie quote whore, but I like being able to hear a line from a movie and knowing immediately what movie it is. Things like "Now, that's what I call high-quality H2O" or "No Stairway? De-nied." It should be said that the quotes don't have to be poignant and meaningful, just memorable.

7 - Humor.

It doesn't have to be like The Hangover and have me laughing from start to finish, but every movie should have a few zingers because, otherwise, what's the point? Some of the best in this category are National Treasure (did you guys honestly think I would use the words "perfect" and "movie" in a blog entry and not include the words "National Treasure"?) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. And I realize that these both are Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer babies as well as having less than wonderful sequels (I like to think that Pirates stopped after the first movie), but they're still able to throw in the funny without being stupid.

With these PMCs and me too lazy to write any more, I've concluded that the only perfect movie is Some Like It Hot.
And I know that there's some argument in that, especially since some people don't like Marilyn Monroe's acting (and even though I love Marilyn, she was horribly messed up during the filming of Some Like It Hot. So much so, in fact, that she had to read some lines off cue cards, and this did hurt her acting.), but it has all the PMCs:

Makeovers? Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon crossdress.
Explosions/Guns? Tony and Jack dress as women in order to hide out from the mob after they witness a murder. It's the mob, obviously there are guns.
A Happy Ending? Without giving anything away, yep.
Keep the Audience on Their Toes/Wanting More? Totally. Jack and Tony are hysterical.
Music? Marilyn Monroe is the singer in the all-woman band that Jack and Tony join.
Quotability? "Story of my life. I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop." and "Well, nobody's perfect."
Humor? Jack Lemmon was hilarious when he wasn't dressed in drag. Him masquerading as a woman is just hysterical. And so is the movie. It's fantastic.

And, I feel better about this decision after just reading the trivia for the movie on imdb.com. The American Film Institution ranked it #1 in the 100 Funniest Movies and #14 on 100 Greatest Movies.

More than anything else, I think making this list means that I should work for the American Film Institution. I wonder how one would go about enlisting their services with that...